I have been thinking a lot lately about journeys.

The journey of Mary and Joseph towards Bethlehem.

The journey of my 5 year old as she leaves kindergarten and prepares for school.

The journey of friends who have lost parents,

Who have now become orphaned as adult’s

the journey that we have traveled as a nation this year,

no star to guide us, no wise men to be seen

Thinking about journeys.

What’s your road looking like right now?

Is the path ahead clear and starlit?

Are there shadows in the dusk?

Last week we gathered at chalice for a wee, pre christmas service

And we sat, around an empty cradle and we waited for love to be born….

I have been thinking a lot about journeys.

Packing the few belongings.

Lifting the child to the hip.

Smiling, bravely, for the little ones.

The boat doesn’t look strong.

And there are so many of us and the wind is picking up.

It can be interesting to reflect on how we know ourselves as a people.

How we trace our becoming.

Sometimes dates can act as markers on a map.

We know about federation or Gallipolli or when our child was born

or where we were when Whitlam was sacked.

Or when we traveled overseas for the first time.

And now we have a new date on our collective and personal memory’s

another date to be added to the litany of dates which make up the Australian refugee tragedy calender

Wednesday 15 December.

At last count, 3 baby girls and a toddler boy

At last count 24 adults.

And we remember the  SIEV X catastrophe in 2001,

and the explosion on the boat in April last year.

And we remember.

And we sit, around an empty cradle waiting for love to be born,

for love is always born.

Such a simple story,

A story about a journey and about a family looking for a home.

Danger on the horizon.

In the desert and on the seas.

My sister once told me about a friend of hers.

A young woman, who had come to Australia as a refugee,

her name is Opaio.

This young woman had been journeying into the city on public transport without a ticket.

Being on a temporary protection visa she was not able to work or receive any real assistance

and she didn’t have enough money to buy the ticket.

And when she got to Flinders Street a beggar, a man a wrapped in blankets and brokenness asked her

if he could have her ticket, the one he assumed she had, now that her journey was over.

Opaio said to my sister:

‘The shame, I felt such shame, I could not help this man, I began to cry and could not stop’

And we sit here around an empty cradle

and we think about Christmas and of how she gave birth to her newborn son

and of how she laid him in the manger because there was no place for them at the inn.

Because there was no place for them at the inn.

Opaio journied to Australia from her homeland of Sudan,

her homeland of rape and murder, starvation, brutality…

Mary and Joseph journied to Bethlehem to fulfil the laws of a foreign ruler who had taken over their lands.

And the people on the boat that smashed into Christmas island journied from grief to grief.

In the story given to us in the first chapters of the gospel of Luke

We hear of another journey.

A journey of love into the body of a newborn babe,

a journey that begins lying in a feeding trough,

staring up at sad eyed donkey’s and scruffy shepherds

A journey into a life of scandal and storytelling, and justice

a journey of grace.

What will your journey be this Christmas?

How will you travel forward into the new year?

With rage?

With kindness?

With hope?

Will you say Yes to walking with the humble and the angel?

Will love be born in the cradle of your heart?

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